National Catholic Register portal reports that on June 10, 2026, at the plenary assembly of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Orlando, Santiago Schnell, provost of Dartmouth College and former dean at the University of Notre Dame, delivered a pointed address urging the bishops to take a more assertive role in safeguarding Catholic identity at Catholic universities. Schnell argued that Catholic institutions have become “indifferent and indistinguishable” from their secular counterparts, driven by the pursuit of college rankings and a reduction of education to mere job training. He called on bishops to be “more vocal” and “more pushy,” reminding them that they “own the word ‘Catholic,'” and proposed a three-part framework for renewal focused on forming intellectual leaders, clarifying the bishops’ role, and strengthening campus culture. The presentation preceded a closed-door conversation among the bishops on the state of Catholic higher education, marking the 25th anniversary of the U.S. implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae.
The Crisis of Catholic Higher Education: A Symptom of Conciliar Apostasy
The address delivered by Santiago Schnell to the assembled members of the USCCB lays bare, with remarkable candor, the utter bankruptcy of the post-conciliar approach to Catholic education. That a lay academic must remind those occupying the episcopal thrones that they “own the word ‘Catholic'” is itself an indictment of catastrophic proportions — not merely of administrative negligence, but of a systematic abandonment of the Church’s divine mission that has been unfolding since the revolutionary upheaval inaugurated by John XXIII and the Second Vatican Council. The very fact that such a speech is necessary, that it is described as a “sober moment,” reveals the depth of the abyss into which Catholic higher education has fallen under the watch of the conciliar sect’s hierarchy.
The Secularization of Catholic Universities: Imitation of the World as Apostasy
Schnell’s observation that Catholic universities have become “indifferent and indistinguishable” from their secular peers is not a novel discovery; it is the entirely predictable fruit of the conciliar revolution’s embrace of the world. He states: “These days, both Catholic institutions and non-Catholic institutions have become very secularized, and they’re doing this through imitation.” The language of “imitation” is a euphemism for what Catholic theology properly identifies as worldliness — the very sin against which Our Lord Jesus Christ prayed in His sacerdotal prayer: “I pray not that thou shouldest take them out of the world, but that thou shouldest keep them from evil. They are not of the world, as I am not of the world” (John 17:15-16).
The pursuit of college rankings, which Schnell identifies as a major driver of this convergence, is merely the external manifestation of a far deeper disease: the loss of the supernatural finality of Catholic education. When Pius XI promulgated Quas Primas in 1925, he declared with apostolic authority that “the Kingdom of our Redeemer encompasses all men” and that “men united in societies are no less subject to the authority of Christ than individuals.” Education, as a fundamental aspect of human society, falls squarely within the royal dominion of Christ the King. To subordinate the mission of a Catholic university to the criteria of secular ranking systems is not merely poor strategy — it is a denial of Christ’s kingship over the intellectual order, precisely the error condemned in proposition 77 of the Syllabus of Errors: “In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship.” The same logic that demands the exclusion of Christ from public life has been applied, within the conciliar structures, to the exclusion of Catholic identity from Catholic universities.
St. Pius X, in Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), identified the Modernist error of reducing religion to a merely human phenomenon, subject to evolution and adaptation to contemporary culture. The secularization of Catholic universities is the institutional embodiment of this heresy. When Schnell laments that education has been reduced to “training for the first job” rather than “training for life,”i> he inadvertently echoes the perennial Catholic teaching that the purpose of education is the formation of the whole man for his supernatural end — eternal beatitude. Yet the conciliar structures have systematically dismantled the very instruments by which this formation was accomplished: the traditional catechism, the scholastic philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the Latin liturgy that elevated the mind to God, and the moral theology that formed consciences in accordance with the Ten Commandments.
The “Catholic Paradox”: Infrastructure Without Faith
Schnell’s identification of what he calls a “Catholic paradox” — strong institutional infrastructure paired with uneven outcomes, particularly among Hispanic Catholics — is a diagnosis that cries out for a supernatural explanation, which the conciliar framework is constitutionally incapable of providing. The crisis is not merely one of educational attainment or institutional management; it is a crisis of faith. The faithful are leaving, as Schnell acknowledges, because “we don’t have intellectuals and we don’t have a proper formation in higher education that allows them to articulate effectively their faith, to themselves and others.”
But the root cause is not a lack of intellectual rigor or institutional willpower. The root cause is that the conciliar sect has emptied the faith of its content. The “faith” that Schnell and the bishops wish to “articulate effectively” is, in the conciliar context, the very Modernism condemned by St. Pius X as “the synthesis of all heresies” (Pascendi, §39). How can universities form intellectuals capable of defending a faith when the hierarchy itself has embraced the errors that destroy that faith? The conciliar sect teaches religious liberty — condemned by Gregory XVI in Mirari Vos and by Pius IX in the Syllabus (propositions 77-79). It practices ecumenism — condemned as indifferentism in proposition 17 of the Syllabus. It promotes the “cult of man” — condemned in Quas Primas as the removal of Christ from human society. The “Catholic paradox” is not a paradox at all; it is the entirely logical consequence of an institution that has betrayed its divine mission.
Furthermore, Schnell’s criticism of mission statements that resemble “NGOs” (non-governmental organizations) touches upon a profound truth, though he does not draw the necessary conclusion. The reduction of the Church’s mission to social service and advocacy is the natural outcome of the conciliar emphasis on “the dignity of the human person” divorced from the supernatural order. When the Church ceases to proclaim that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), she inevitably degenerates into a humanitarian agency indistinguishable from the world’s charitable organizations. Pius XI warned in Quas Primas that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The same principle applies to education: without the recognition of Christ the King as the foundation and end of all learning, Catholic universities will continue their descent into secular irrelevance.
The Role of Bishops: Authority Without Jurisdiction in a Structure of Apostasy
Schnell’s exhortation to the bishops — “You own the word ‘Catholic.’ We academic administrators, we don’t” — is a statement that, in the mouth of a faithful Catholic, would carry the weight of canonical and theological truth. The bishop, as the successor of the Apostles, does indeed possess the authority and the duty to safeguard the Catholic character of institutions within his diocese. Ex Corde Ecclesiae, the 1990 apostolic constitution promulgated by John Paul II, affirms that the local bishop “has the right and duty to watch over the preservation and strengthening” of the Catholic character of universities in his diocese.
However, the fundamental question that neither Schnell nor the assembled bishops dare to confront is whether those occupying the episcopal thrones within the conciliar structures possess legitimate authority at all. The theological principles articulated by St. Robert Bellarmine, Wernz and Vidal, John of St. Thomas, and confirmed by Canon 188.4 of the 1917 Code of Canon Law establish with certainty that a manifest heretic loses his office ipso facto, without any declaration by the Church. The bishops of the conciliar sect have, for decades, publicly embraced and propagated doctrines condemned by the perennial Magisterium: religious liberty (Dignitatis Humanae), ecumenism (Unitatis Redintegratio), the novel concept of collegiality that undermines papal primacy, and the liturgical revolution that has rendered the Novus Ordo Missae a Protestantized assembly rather than the propitiatory sacrifice of the Mass. These are not private opinions; they are public, notorious, and manifest heresies.
As Bellarmine teaches: “A Pope who is a manifest heretic, by that very fact ceases to be Pope and head, just as he ceases to be a Christian and member of the body of the Church” (De Romano Pontifice, II, 30). And further: “A manifest heretic cannot be Pope… The reason for this is that he cannot be the head of something of which he is not a member; now, he who is not a Christian is not a member of the Church, and a manifest heretic is not a Christian” (ibid.). If the manifestly heretical occupant of the See of Peter has lost his jurisdiction — as the Bull Cum ex Apostolatus Officio of Paul IV confirms — then those bishops who have received their mission and mandate from this usurper possess no legitimate authority to “watch over” anything. The entire edifice of the conciliar hierarchy is built upon a foundation of nullity.
Schnell’s appeal to the bishops to be “more pushy” is therefore not merely insufficient — it is directed at the wrong address. The crisis of Catholic higher education cannot be resolved by urging illegitimate authority figures to exercise an authority they do not possess. The only remedy is a return to the integral Catholic faith, the true Mass, and the legitimate hierarchy that would flow from a true Pope — a Pope who would, as his first act, condemn the errors of Vatican II and restore the Church to her supernatural mission.
The Mission of Catholic Universities: Forming Saints, Not Credentials
Despite the fundamental flaws in Schnell’s analysis, his proposal that Catholic universities should form scholars with the potential to be “Doctors of the Church” — saints who have made significant contributions to theology or doctrine — is a noble aspiration that aligns with the perennial Catholic understanding of education’s purpose. The true mission of a Catholic university, as articulated by Pius XI in Divini Illius Magistri (1929), is the formation of “true and perfect Christians” — men and women whose intellects are formed in the light of divine revelation and whose wills are ordered toward the love of God above all things.
Yet this mission is impossible within the conciliar framework. The “Doctors of the Church” to whom Schnell refers — St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Bonaventure, St. Teresa of Ávila — were formed in the traditional Catholic intellectual tradition: the study of Sacred Scripture through the lens of the Fathers, the philosophy of Aristotle as perfected by St. Thomas, the theology of the sacraments as defined by the Council of Trent, and the liturgical life of the Church centered on the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. The conciliar university, by contrast, has replaced this formation with the study of “the signs of the times,” the theology of liberation, the hermeneutics of continuity (which is merely the evolution of dogmas dressed in traditional language), and the celebration of a liturgy that is, at best, a memorial meal and, at worst, an act of idolatry.
Schnell’s reference to St. John Henry Newman’s concept of genius loci — the “spirit of place” formed through daily campus life and conversations — is particularly ironic given that Newman himself was a figure whose theological legacy is deeply problematic. Newman’s theory of the development of doctrine, which Schnell implicitly invokes, was identified by St. Pius X as a cornerstone of Modernist theology. The Syllabus Lamentabili (1907) condemns the proposition that “truth changes with man, because it develops with him, in him, and through him” (proposition 58) — precisely the error that Newman’s theory, taken to its logical conclusion, entails. That Newman was “canonized” by the conciliar sect — an act of no juridical or spiritual force given the manifest heresy of the one performing it — only underscores the depth of the confusion that pervades the post-conciliar institution.
Moreover, the very concept of “campus culture” as a vehicle for Catholic formation is a naturalistic substitute for the supernatural means of grace. The true genius loci of a Catholic university is not formed by conversations in dormitories but by the celebration of the Most Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, the preaching of sound doctrine, the administration of the sacraments, and the study of theology in its proper sense — sacra doctrina, the science of God as known through divine revelation. Without these supernatural instruments, no amount of institutional reform, episcopal assertiveness, or mission-statement revision will produce anything other than what the conciliar universities already are: secular institutions with Catholic names.
The Illusion of Reform Within a Structure of Apostasy
The closed-door conversation on Catholic higher education that followed Schnell’s presentation is emblematic of the conciliar sect’s approach to every crisis it faces: discussion without resolution, concern without conversion, reform without repentance. The bishops will speak among themselves, perhaps issue a statement, perhaps commission a study — and nothing will change. For the problem is not one of policy or governance; it is one of faith. The conciliar sect does not believe what the Church has always believed. It does not teach what the Church has always taught. It does not worship as the Church has always worshipped. And no amount of institutional tinkering can compensate for this fundamental apostasy.
The 25th anniversary of the U.S. implementation of Ex Corde Ecclesiae — a document promulgated by John Paul II, a manifest heretic and apostate whose acts possess no binding authority — is not a cause for celebration but for mourning. The document itself, while containing some language that echoes traditional Catholic teaching, was promulgated within the framework of the conciliar revolution and is therefore tainted by the errors of that revolution. Its vision of the Catholic university is inseparable from the conciliar vision of the Church as “People of God,” a vision that reduces the Church from a hierarchical society divinely instituted by Christ to a democratic community shaped by human consensus.
The true remedy for the crisis of Catholic higher education is not more assertive bishops, not better mission statements, not improved campus culture — it is the restoration of the Catholic faith in its integrity. This means the restoration of the true Mass, the restoration of sound doctrine, the restoration of the traditional catechism, and the restoration of a legitimate hierarchy that teaches, governs, and sanctifies in the name of Christ the King. Until that restoration comes — and it will come, for “in the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph” — the institutions that bear the name “Catholic” will continue their descent into the abyss of secular irrelevance, bearing witness not to the vitality of the faith but to the consequences of its betrayal.
The words of Pius XI in Quas Primas resound with prophetic clarity: “When God and Jesus Christ — as we lamented — were removed from laws and states and when authority was derived not from God but from men, the foundations of that authority were destroyed, because the main reason why some have the right to command and others have the duty to obey was removed.” The same is true of Catholic education: when Christ is removed from the university — when His kingship is denied, His doctrine is diluted, His worship is profaned — the institution ceases to be Catholic in anything but name. And a name without reality is not a legacy; it is a lie.
Source:
‘You Own the Word Catholic’: Higher Ed Leader Urges Bishops to Protect Catholic Identity at Universities (ncregister.com)
Date: 11.06.2026